First Ever Permanent WordPress Tattoo

Over the last month, I’ve been telling everyone in the WordPress Community about my friend, Ed Morita, in Hawaii whose been running a contest asking “Where Should I Put My WordPress Tattoo?” He’s putting a permanent tattoo on his body (forearm) because blogging with WordPress changed his life and he wants to honor it by adding to his tattoo body art collection.

The deadline was January 30 and he’s getting the tattoo put on him right now as I blog this.

Update: Ed has finished getting his tattoo while we twittered it live and he captured images on his iPhone, so the images are upside down. There is some color distortion due to the resolution but also the antiseptic wash on his arm. Here are the latest series of pictures.

Update II:My WordPress Tattoo is Ed’s description and story behind the first WordPress permanent tattoo (and it’s the right logo. Matt Mullenweg agrees.). He wanted to reveal the geeky part of personality. Like Data from Star Trek Next Generation, and other androids and cyborgs throughout television and movie history, he wanted the tattoo to look like the skin was torn off his arm to reveal the circuitry beneath, of which the WordPress logo is a chip in the circuit board. It is Ed Morita’s inspired design that led the tattoo artist down the path to the tattoo’s design. Kudos to both for the modern artistic approach to an age old art form.

Come join us on Twitter for the fun, and the pain, of the first WordPress tattoo permanently inked onto a fan’s body.

This is the final version right side up, as you would view his new WordPress tattoo if you were shaking hands with him.

Remember that tattoos have been around before modern religion as art, identification, and branding. They are respected around the world. Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean they aren’t valued by others.

Drupal is 100 times better than wordpress, all of you people that like wordpress just don’t understand how to use drupal, and that’s ok – there’s a bit of a learning curve and most of you will never figure it out

I posted the GOOD/BAD W graphic from a few posts ago. (which is a Ma.tt file) with the tattoo beside each other and pointed out to the parts I am questioning about the tattoo being the correct W (the correct logo has that part curved slightly, the tattoo is flat).

I repeat what my predecessors says. I love WordPress as an excellent and best blogger CMS. … but a tattoo is a but too much. Still it’s nice to see people are really devoted to WP. Nice ripping of the skin, looks good.

I would say that that is definitely taking it to another level!! I have two tattoo’s which have very personal meanings to me. I don’t know if WordPress would be that personal a reason? I completely enjoy WP – but a tattoo? Not. ;-)

Jeff is right about using the “new” logo, but what about the next new logo? I wouldn’t worry. In 20 years he can just say it means W. Bush, or Wal-Mart, or whatever comes out by then that could be represented by a giant W.

Ack, and I thought I was a WP fanboy for owning the hoodie, t-shirt and mug.
It wasn’t that long ago that I saw a photo of a gal with the WordPress logo inked on her leg. Could this be a disturbing trend like all those Tux tats?

It seems to me that almost every comment any of you have made is pretty critical for not being tattoo artists yourselves, and for having opinions on the quality of the tattoo, when the picture itself is part of the problem. As you can see in the full size, the image quality of the photo is pretty poor.
It’s amazing to me how not even 10% of the comments can in any way shape or form be supportive of someones personal decision. Shouldn’t we be celebrating the fact that someone loves something to such an extent to have it as a somewhat permanent presence on their body. And that something as simple as a PHP Blogging Platform can make someone happy?
It’s astonishing at how negative people are. I feel ashamed to be a fellow WordPress user, is this is how half of you react to something that is truly great.
No, I would not get this tattoo myself, but that does not mean that it is bad or that it is a bad decision. I think it says a lot about a person to have the ba//s to do something like this, and would encourage it any day.

@phiredesign “It seems to me that almost every comment any of you have made is pretty critical for not being tattoo artists yourselves, and for having opinions on the quality of the tattoo”

Sorry, pal. I’m quite familiar with quality work from my first stop in a Tucson shop in 1990 to my latest in Wisconsin. He (you?) is just not a great artisan. If the guy with the tat is happy, fine. But I’d be extremely disappointed if that ended up anywhere on my body.

Oh dear I hope that is fake cos that is the lamest tattoo ever! I love tattoo’s and I love wordpress but thats just all wrong, can’t believe he wasn’t even drunk when he decide to do it, and they say footballers have bad tattoo’s….

People overreact because they aren’t used to technological-related tattoos yet. I wouldn’t get one myself, but this tattoo has much more meaning than the tribal tattoos we saw a couple of years ago. And from a typographical point of view I reckon he could have chosen far worse logos than this W. Shouldn’t have used colours though in my opinion…

I think the person who got it should have thought about the design a bit more, before getting it.. I could easily have designed a better tattoo xP
Though, I hope Ed Morita don’t regret getting the tattoo.

You really love WordPress to extend of doing a tattoo on your body about it. Although this may sound weird to some people, but that is you and they should understand you that way. I too love WordPress.

A shame that the link to Ed’s telling of why he got the tattoo and such has gone the way of 404. It has been a few years but still, a little piece of WP History goes missing again :( at least this article does a good job and has pictures!

Oh, no! Crap. Let me see if I can find a link to Archive.org version or contact Ed and ask him to republish his story. I’m still in contact with him.

The reason was humbling to me. He has many tattoos as part of the way he honors achievements and memories, important events in his life. Being introduced to blogging and WordPress in a workshop I taught in Hawaii opened a new world to him. Not long after, his hand was crushed in a pastry machine, leaving him out of work as a master chef and baker, and undergoing years of surgeries to regain his hand. Blogging about food, cooking, etc., saved his life, he says keeping him on track, focused, and continued to be connected with his beloved industry while recovering. He created a community around his site and found new friends, support, and love while his life was spinning out of control. In the beginning of all that, he chose to honor WordPress by having this tattoo done, offering up a contest to his readers to vote on where to place it. Matt Mullenweg recommended he put it on his wrist so it could be easily viewed when shaking hands. That is where he put it.

Ed joined me at WordCamp SF a few weeks later, the skin peeling around the tattoo as part of the process, and we showed him of to the crowds during my presentations. What fun was that! We spent a day going through Chinatown, eating and drinking (tea) our way into a stupor, exploring all the wonderful food, food and tea suppliers, and kitchen stores. I adore him! What a gift to the WordPress Community.

It has been verified multiple times over that this is the first official WordPress tattoo. The second was John Hawkins, I believe, from Vegas, but unfortunately, he used the wrong logo. Not sure if he got that fixed or not. Soon after, others were reported in South American and Australia, then I lost track.

BTW, Jeff, the founder of Archive.org and the Way Back Machine spoke at a WordCamp in Portland a couple years ago and challenged WordPress Plugin authors and developers to help him find a way of preventing 404 errors by having a “backup link” to a link via the Way Back Machine. Many were intrigued by that, the idea of WordPress sites always having a preserved link in their content, but I have no idea if that was followed up on. Maybe you can put the word out to the community. I think it is a brilliant idea to preserve our linking history.

Thanks for the heads up and the tip on the presentation at WordCamp Portland on preserving WordPress blogs. I think I found the video you’re talking about from WordCamp Portland 2013. I’m definitely going to look into it some more as the longer I write about WordPress, the more preserving WordPress content is important to me.

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